


Eyes of stars and void

by Lumeha



Series: Ironstrange Bingo 2019 [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: ............. don't ask me I had an idea and I needed a set up to work on this AU, A Space Dragon Alien, Alternative Universe - Someone Is An Alien, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Pre-Slash, SO, That's... that's it that's the plot of this one-shot, don't judge me plz I don't even know, here is the set-up one-shot, ironstrange bingo, it will arrive... in... the other stuff set in this AU, you will get other random one-shot in this AU next
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-13
Updated: 2019-03-13
Packaged: 2019-11-16 17:06:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18098522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lumeha/pseuds/Lumeha
Summary: Ironstrange Bingo prompt : AlienHe ran, ran, ran himself to the ground, so the world could get up again, so everyone could come back, so everything was as normal as it could be after Thanos. He ran until he found himself on the steps of the Sanctum, hand hovering over the door.Until he found himself in front of the sorcerer, with inhuman eyes, only the depth of the sea and space looking back at him. No sclera. No iris. No pupil. Only depth and vastness and something alien, reflecting no light nor dark.- What are you, Strange ?





	Eyes of stars and void

**Author's Note:**

> I plan on writing other one-shots in this AU, so get used to weird eyes and scales and some alien descriptions

On the eve of the end of the world, a ring of fire opened in a park, and Tony felt like he was falling, falling, falling, endlessly, ready to crash against the concrete, the moment his eyes caught the ones of the man in front of him.

But there was more, so much more, that they had to worry about. He couldn’t stop to ask about his eyes, about the cold of space and the warm of serenity. About the stars in those eyes, that no one seemed to catch. He ran against time, against the world, against Death Herself.

 

_When he looked into space, he felt like space was looking back at him, and what should have been the traumatic reminder of an almost death was soothing._

 

He ran, ran, ran himself to the ground, so the world could get up again, so everyone could come back, so everything was as normal as it could be after Thanos. He ran until he found himself on the steps of the Sanctum, hand hovering over the door.

Until he found himself in front of the sorcerer, with inhuman eyes, only the depth of the sea and space looking back at him. No sclera. No iris. No pupil. Only depth and vastness and something alien, reflecting no light nor dark.

\- What are you, Strange ?  
\- So impolite.

The smile (was it a smile ?) was blinding, cut sharp from the void. The sorcerer was finding his question amusing. Him, standing in front of his home, with tiredness gnawing on all his bones and flesh, but still daring, facing the other man, wrapped in his loyal outerwear, who looked unaffected by what happened to them.

\- Yeah, well, I want answers, so I ask the questions.  
\- Follow me. It is warmer inside.

The door closed behind them. Tony’s eyes couldn’t find a place to stop, going from doors to books to artefacts to… the whole place was a museum, old and creaky, of wood and magic. Everything he wasn’t. Strange waved toward a seat and sat down in front of it, the Cloak letting him float above the floor.

\- Anything you want to drink ?  
\- Do you have any decent coffee around here ?

Strange shrugged, and a cup appeared on the small table next to the seat. The sorcerer liked his party tricks. But Tony wasn’t going to complain. Except if the coffee was bad. He was, understandably, going to complain if the coffee was bad. He didn’t trust the sorcerers with beverages. They clearly never heard of an actual coffee maker.

\- So ? What are you, Strange ?  
\- A sorcerer.  
\- Ah, don’t play that game. The whole… inhuman eyes thing. Space. Galaxy void holes instead of eyes.

There was nothing that showed where Strange was looking, but Tony could feel his attention, sudden and powerful.

\- I see.  
\- Well, sure, you see, and I see those eyes, but honestly ? I don’t know how you see through these eyes, this is completely absurd, what filters the ligh…  
\- You should not be able to see them like that.

That stopped the rambling. Any thought rushing through his mind stopped to a screeching halt, leaving only one question to survive.

\- What do you mean ?  
\- They are hidden behind a glamour. They appear quite human to anyone else, except if I choose to remove it. You, right now, are seeing through part of the spell.  
\- Did I hear “part of the spell” correctly ?  
\- Yes. This… human form is not exactly my actual form.

By his tone, Strange was not thinking this was a life changing sentence. Nothing that could transform the world, turn it inside out and show how the seams where not as solid as they were sewn. Or Strange expected him to think it was just another weirdness the world was throwing at his understanding, and that he could easily slide it into the already messy puzzle of the universe.

He was looking at him, stars swirling behind the too human eyelids, and what should be cold and dark and terrifying echoed the warm feeling of serenity that he felt when he was trapped into space. A familiarity that wasn’t supposed to be, holding hands with fear and something else.

\- Okay. Okay. Give me some more potent coffee, I need it, right now.

More coffee and probably more time to truly digest… whatever was happening. But it was different from the knot of anxiety tightening his throat and shaking his lungs. The mug he was holding filled once more with coffee, and he closed his eyes for a second, taking the time to appreciate the warmth and scent.

He thought that the scene would maybe change when he opened back his eyes. But here he was, seating in a plush chair that was definitely more than double his age, the sorcerer helped above the wooden floor by his Cloak, and galaxies looking back at him.

\- So. What… are you ? And why would I see your eyes like that ?  
\- … I saved you, once, before you knew me. You must have looked into my eyes. They are a window to my true nature, and you saw it.

His blood froze. He knew. Understood why these eyes seemed so familiar. He remembered, right before gravity took care of his body once again, when he was alone with the Chitauri in the vastness of space.

 

_In the depth of space, in the cold, freezing silence, something looked back at him, huge and imposing. He could not understand its shape, its lines, what it was, his brain refusing to translate what he was seeing. Despite the panic, despite the pain and the scream rotting in his throat, a wave of warmth settled on his shoulders, and he closed his eyes, waiting for the end._

_It was the last thing he could remember before his fall, before, half dead, he asked his teammates to try that shawarma he saw on the way, before his brain started overthinking why his fear was holding hands with an alien serenity._

 

Tony looked at Strange, who looked at him back. _He_ was the reason space wasn’t the nightmare he thought it should be. Once again, the sorcerer left him with emotions that weren’t those he knew he would have felt in any other circumstances.

Stephen Strange had saved him to leave him with his worst fears on Titan.

Stephen Strange was the reason he was even alive to know of the threat, and did not make himself known to help, despite his knowledge.

He should have mistrusted him, hated him, and he could not.

\- Why ?  
\- What is Earth without her greatest defender ? I saw what you did and decided that a sacrifice was not needed if I could help it. I send you back on Earth.

Strange laid back a little more into the Cloak’s embrace and closed his eyes with a sigh. The collar pat him on the cheek, making the sorcerer grumble. With one of his many complicated gestures, he made a teacup appear in his hands, before wrapping his trembling fingers along.

He looked perfectly and entirely human, down to the small habits, if he ignored the eyes. Tony wondered how he learnt them. When. Why was this being here, enjoying the mundane parts of life. And the not so mundane, he reminded himself, surrounded as he was by magic.

\- And why are you here ? Doing… all this ? The magic things ? The saving the people ?  
\- I like this reality. This universe. It welcomed me like a home when I had none.  
\- What happened to you ? To your hands ?

The sorcerer tilted his head slightly, before putting the teacup on the table next to Tony’s seat and removing his gloves. Here were the trembling hands, covered in scars.

\- I can show them to you. How they truly look.

Strange waited for a nod. When he had it, he put his hands in front of the other man.

Scars and skins receded, melted into something that Tony couldn’t quite comprehend. The way the long and slender claws moved reminded him of how the sorcerer’s head moved while exploring the future through the Time Stone. Here, and there, and here again, not quite always at the same place. There was nothing human about the way they moved or the way they looked, with shimmering scales of a blue too deep, scattered with silver speckles.

He reached, and took one in between his. Strange blinked, slowly, tensing up, but he didn’t try to escape. The sensation against his skin was alien. The movement was nothing he could predict, the scales cold, and the claws didn’t leave a scratch. And it was reassuring.

\- So.. your story ?

\- I was a healer, for all kind of beings.The best that ever was. If I couldn’t heal it, I would find a way to do it, not because it saved life, but because not being able to do it would tarnish my accomplishments. Because I was arrogant and too sure of myself, I caused my own doom. And that cost me my hands, as you can see, and I was thrown into dimensions and realities, cursed to never to find one to welcome me. I was helped by the Ancient One, and this is why I am now here, at the New York Sanctum.

Tony blinked slowly, keeping Strange’s hands in his, until he took them back and folded them into his lap. A smile blossomed on his lips, something small and sincere, and the sorcerer answered to it with one of his own. He knew, without a doubt, that not many were honoured with this knowledge, with the delicate hands and the true strangeness of Strange.

(It made his heart skip a beat, painfully sweet)

\- This explain why I never found anything about you. I asked FRIDAY, after everything finally calmed down, and she came up with a whole lot of nothing.    
\- Well, no one is supposed to know much about Stephen Strange, or Kamar Taj, or magic. You weren’t supposed to look into my eyes either, and here we are.

There was no accusation in his tone, nor in his expression. It was what it was : no one was supposed to learn about any of this, and here they were, sharing about it.

Tony finished his coffee (not the best, but not the worse, and for coffee that magically appeared in a mug, maybe that was not too bad). In a world of Asgardian and magic and infinity stones, this was still a story he had troubles with.

\- You still haven’t answered one question. What are you ?  
\- Something alien. I never really had a name except my own. But… I am close to dragons, except my nature is of stars and space, not of the Earth.

Strange was playing with the lapel of the Cloak, his hands still those strange claws. They didn’t look out of place in his quite ethereal looks. Even the eyes, so alien and vast, were growing on him.

\- A space dragon. And a sorcerer. And you keep an infinity stone. And the guy who decided to save my skin in space. Methink thou art an overachiever, Stephen Strange.

A laugh answered him.

\- I want to see you one day, Tony said, putting his mug back on the table.

The sorcerer smiled, and the cutting edges were fangs, inhuman and beautiful. It was as if the veil of magic was slightly off, now that he knew, almost revealing what was hidden under, and it was making his heart race with excitation.

\- Maybe you will, Tony Stark. I have trusted you with our home, I can trust you with myself. As I already did.


End file.
